That whole "tone" thing

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I can't stand it.

I can't stand it that normals insist it's necessary and meaningful when they're clearly making it up, and now it's intruded on my workplace.

I need to know if saying "requiring me to use tone correctly is a violation of my rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act."

Please clarify.

Do you mean your 'tone' of voice...ie. vocal intonation/inflection?

...and these are your fellow faculty members?

Written tone. My syllabi are "intimidating" and "hostile" and I have to make them "friendly."

I'm offended, not to mention unable to do what they're demanding.

Yep, you're being punished for being educated. You probably paid ettention in school while the other kids were daydreaming and creating problems. Now that everyone's grown up those same kids will demand you speak at thier uneducated level because they don't want you thinking you're better than them. It doesn't matter that you invested the effort and time to educate yourself, which by definition makes you better, it only matters that there are a lot of uneducated people and they demand to be spoken to in language they understand. The ignorant masses, Plato's nightmare. Remember anything involving a group will always sink to the lowest common denominator, not rise to the highest.

What you are describing is actually fascinating. I've also observed this.
I am personally used to using longer more descriptive words in my speech and people feel uncomfortable around me.

Present day theories of language do not seem to highlight this issue, present day theories of language ought to highlight this issue.

A big part of me coming on this forum is to find people who are unhappy about this and want to do something about it.

But to my mind, all people do is complain.

It saddens me.

I agree with Aristophanes.

By 'intimidating' and 'hostile' I'm sure they actually mean 'outspoken', 'confident', 'politically incorrect', 'assertive' and 'intelligent/questioning the workplace and what's right/wrong'.

By 'friendly' they actually mean 'passive', 'docile', and 'be a good little worker ant unless you want to get fired', they're just stating it in a passive-aggressive way rather than outright threatening it against you.

Me AND Aristophanes would also be criticized/punished for the way we have typed our messages out because people in a workplace can be cowards.

I understand professionalism, following the rules, formality, maturity, etc. but there's a difference between working together peacefully with others and just blindly following the higher-ups (who would fancy themselves your 'superiors') who don't want you messing up their manipulative system designed to intend they always earn better pay and promotions, while you remain dead-end in your job.

A lot of what I am saying are very bold assumptions, so I'd like far more detail on the situation.

What are some examples of your 'hostle' and ''intimidating' attitude and who is criticising you? Just other co-workers or the (a55hole?) boss?

Where exactly do you work and how much trouble have you gotten into in the past and why?

PersonallyI I can speak/write/post with detail, expression, and a tad more verbosity than necessary to get my points and arguments across. Most can't handle it and do find it 'intimidating' and a bit 'full-on'.

I'm just not that 'simple'.

Reasons plenty of aspies struggle with 'small talk' is because we might prefer deep conversation, or other forms of 'big talk' that actually make you think* instead of consume.**

*Think = debate, discussion, etc. on topics that require some sense of knowledge e.g. politics, history, religion, philosophy, the sciences, etc. because without knowledge on the topic you get ignorant people who can say things that are outright factually wrong or misintrepreted from the info they already recieved of it.

*consume = things that are easy to talk about because it's not about creativity of new ideas or thoughts but a regurgitation of exiting things. E.g. pop culture, etc. You could talk about a tv show/movie and give your opinion on the writing, character development, etc. that makes your conversation 'thinking', but just saying 'Oh yeah! There were, like, cool explosions and sh*t" is consuming as it's just passively recieving and reacting to a stimulus rather than building ideas onto it.

Yes, outrider its a common problem amongst us austistic spectrum people who try to describe things in a specific way with details. People don't react to it well they get angry with us.

So my question is why is this phenomenon not explained scientfically some where.

Its all well to come on to a forum and say with a sense of great self assurance aren't we superior to nt's but the fact of the matter is we autistic people really suffer from this behaviour.

I'd like the OP person to keep a log of his experiences, I should also keep a log of my experiences and try to consider scientifically why this is happening.

@outrider

I really like the way you distinguish "think" and "consume".

Making descriptions and emails can be annoying. Since some people interpret a factual text as 'cold' or even hostile.
And when I use a bit of logic some people seem not be able to understand certain steps.
Then it takes a lot of extra explanation and then they complain about texts that are too long.

for some cases it is a solution to use pictures to clarify things. For certain reasons a picture with a few words is interpreted different then the same described in text.

That's because people actually think in pictures.

I don't know how familiar you are with Temple Grandin the autistic professor.

She makes a big song and dance about how her autism makes her "think in pictures".

But the jokes on the nts because they think in pictures too, while nts are loving words and literature an autistic person comes in and says how things really are.

I use a lot of pictures in my head, but they are different from the ones I see used in instructions. Converting from one picture to the other or converting text to picture is not different from me. But since using text is easier for me I prefer text above pictures.

Yeah I remember somewhere most people tend to be better visual thinkers.

Though if I had a job, I think IT'S A JOB, not a simple easy instruction booklet on an airplane or whatever.

It's a little patronizing to one's literary and interpretation skills to use easy, step-by-step diagrams.

But some NT's don't like long-winded messages that, if actually read, describe things in the EXACT amount of detail actually required for flawless communication, but prefer to look at the bigger picture. Not always ideal in some fields (science, medical, etc.)

anyway, yeah, I'm done with the smugness now.

I can imagine a syllabus would appear hostile if it had a lot of bold fonts, all caps, and underlining with exclamation points in it. Particularly if it emphasized the punitive consequences of not fulfilling all of its requirements (i.e. "All late assignments WILL be thrown in the trash and NO CREDIT GIVEN!! !") and if it does not include any words of encouragement (like "Please feel free to come to my office hours with any questions and I will work with you.") Perhaps a comparison with your colleagues' syllabi would show what they are doing to be found acceptable.

The simple answer to why NTs get upset by precise language using multisyllabic words is that it makes them feel stupid. As soon as you utter a word they don't know, they have a defensive emotional reaction, and the more you go on talking that way the more annoyed they feel.

Don't forget the opposing double standard-- if you invest your time working out and getting "big" instead of spending it learning and getting "smart" it's socially acceptable to go around pushing people around due to your size. You're not allowed to make people feel stupid that didn't invest in education, but it's perfectly acceptable to push others around due to size, which in many cases isn't even earned, it's merely genetic. I'll be honest, until I was about 26/27 I used to treat people with the amount of respect I would show myself but after repeatedly running into tribalistic thought patterns I just accepted that people really are just animals, add in human society where stupid can balloon in exponential quantities and they may actually be dumber than most animals.

There are a few intelligent, empathizing, broad thinking individuals but in my estimation they are no more than 20% of the population if even that, and their ideas however good, noble, or correct, will be automatically discarded by the hierarchy merely because their population is small. The nerd gets stuck in a middle wage job with a fire breathing taskmaster over his shoulder slaving away to create the technology and advancement that is the core of civilization, but at the end of the day Bubba would give up all the advancement that's enriched his life just to see the nerd get punched in the face merely because he finds it funny.

Not knowing where SadPhD works nor in what capacity makes it difficult to offer any advice. If his courses are introductory ones and it is known that many of the students are new to the college experience, I would think a friendlier tone would be important. Comparing with colleagues' syllabi is a good suggestion.

If student evaluations are important to promotion and pay at that school, then unfortunately courting the students' approval is probably necessary.

Mmm, yes, paid degree mills-- the modern American college. Now if they started instituting standardized comprehensive exit exams to receive a degree I'd be much more impressed because it would actually demonstrate some bit of acquired knowledge. As it stands you're right, it's pay to play and those are the rules professors will be coerced to follow.